Israeli troops leave Gaza’s Shifa Hospital a wreck in sea of rubble

Israeli forces have withdrawn from Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after a two-week operation, the Israeli military said on Monday, leaving behind a wasteland of destroyed buildings and Palestinian bodies scattered in the dirt of the complex.

Hundreds of residents rushed to the area around the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital to check on damage to the surrounding residential districts after fighting between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group that administers Gaza.

The Israeli military said it had killed and detained hundreds of gunmen in clashes in the area of the hospital, and seized weaponry and intelligence documents. Hamas and medical staff deny that Palestinian fighters have any armed presence in hospitals.

A spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Emergency Service said Israeli forces had executed two people whose bodies were found at the complex in handcuffs, and used bulldozers to dig up the grounds of the complex and exhume buried bodies.

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Reuters could not verify the allegation of executions and Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Footage circulated on social media and not yet verified by Reuters showed the bodies of dead Palestinians, some covered in dirty blankets, scattered on the ground around the charred hulk of the hospital building, many of whose outer walls were missing.

It showed the grounds heavily ploughed up, and numerous buildings outside the facility either flattened or burned down.

“I haven’t stopped crying since I arrived here, horrible massacres were committed by the occupation here,” said Samir Basel (43) speaking to Reuters via a chat app as he toured Al Shifa.

“The place is destroyed, buildings have been burnt and destroyed. This place needs to be rebuilt – there is no Shifa hospital any more,” Basel said.

Israel said operations inside Al Shifa had been conducted “while preventing harm to civilians, patients and medical teams”.

[ Moral, legal, and political efforts to end the suffering in Gaza are reaching a crescendo ]

Meanwhile, tens of thousands protested in Jerusalem on Sunday night calling for the release of the hostages held in Hamas captivity and for new elections.

The protesters also plan to set up a four-day protest camp outside the Knesset parliament and some marched through ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighbourhoods, criticising the exemption from military service enjoyed by religious seminary students.

The Gaza war has raged for almost six months and many of the hostages’ relatives are now calling explicitly for prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to be ousted from office and issued the following statement, addressed to Mr Netanyahu: “You are the obstacle to a deal. We will act for your immediate ousting from office and replacement because that is the only way to get them home. We will pursue you and we won’t relent.”

“Netanyahu is guilty of the October 7th failure and is deliberately leading us to the country’s destruction” read a statement by the Kaplan Force, one of the main antigovernment protest groups. “At this stage courageous civil action is once again needed to genuinely save Israel.”

Other relatives called for national unity and opposed the calls for new elections.

Mr Netanyahu, in a news conference on Sunday night, just a few hours before undergoing a hernia operation, said he is working around the clock the free all the hostages and he warned that new elections would paralyse Israel for six to eight months. “It would paralyse negotiations for freeing our hostages and would bring an end to the war before achieving its goals, and the first who welcome this is Hamas, and that says everything.”

[ The Irish Times view on the UN Security Council Gaza motion: slow progress ]

He also vowed that nothing will prevent Israel attacking the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians have found shelter.

The Jerusalem protest took place as a low-level Israeli team arrived in Cairo, Egypt, for more talks aimed at achieving a new ceasefire and hostage release deal after negotiations in Doha, Qatar ended a week ago without a breakthrough.

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan accused Israel of procrastinating. “We want answers regarding the end of the war, withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the return of the displaced and the rehabilitation of Gaza,” he said.

The fighting in Gaza continues and the Israeli army said it carried out an air strike against what it described as a command centre operated by the Islamic Jihad in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa hospital in the central Gaza Strip. “The terrorists were struck precisely and the hospital building was not damaged and its functioning was not affected,” said the army statement.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said almost 32,800 Palestinians have been killed since the war began. Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 253 hostages seized in the surprise Hamas attack on October 7th. Some 134 hostages, dead and alive, remain in Hamas captivity.

A convoy of three ships with nearly 400 tonnes of food, enough for more than a million meals, and other supplies is expected to arrive off the northern Gaza coast on Monday. Humanitarian officials warn that aid deliveries by sea and air are not enough and have called on Israel to permit more aid deliveries by road, the quickest and most efficient way to transfer large supplies of aid. - Reuters

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